This weekend, as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau begins the process of unwrapping his long-proffered rescue plan for the middle class, it will quickly become apparent that there is no magic formula to disappear this particular problem, such as it is. Income inequality has been on the rise in Western democracies, especially in the United States but also in Canada, since the early 1980s. If there were a “Eureka!” fix it would already have been found and put to use.

That means this convention – and the debates to follow, setting the stage for the 2015 election – will be primarily about trust, which is another way of saying leadership. The Liberals’ objective this weekend will be, very simply, to engender trust among working Canadians that Trudeau and his team have the chops to manage a G8 economy. The goal is to persuade economically conservative Canadians it is safe to move back to the red team, which they have abandoned in droves since 2004.

Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau responds to reporters questions at aTHE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot news conference, Wednesday, February 19, 2014 during a two-day party caucus meeting in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Because the party today has a popular new leader and money in the till, and is leading in the polls, it almost can’t help but deliver a more focused and energetic affair than the desultory effort two years ago. At that time Liberals were perplexed by the question of whether then-interim leader Bob Rae would reach for the brass ring, again. He didn’t and they no longer are – leaving them free to concentrate on delivering a message. The question: What message?

There are myriad policy resolutions to be discussed, ranging from assisted suicide, to thorium nuclear energy, to the future of public health care (a perennial favourite), to democratic reform. The latter motions are worth watching, if only because this may be the only major policy area in which the Liberals offer something diametrically different from the Conservatives in 2015; more on that in a moment. The rest are grist for the policy mill, to be accepted or rejected as the leadership later sees fit.

The much more important content will emerge between those policy forums, in the speeches that punctuate the weekend. Trudeau’s two addresses – one Thursday to whip up the troops, another Saturday to address policy – bookend the weekend. Chrystia Freeland, a star Trudeau recruit and now MP for Toronto Centre, headlines a chat with Lawrence Summers, the Harvard economist and former U.S. treasury secretary. Friday there’s a mid-day speech by retired General Andrew Leslie, likely on foreign policy, and several panel sessions heavy on economics. The point of it all is quite clear: It’s the Liberals telling us they can mind the store.

Francois Brunet, is setting computers for the Liberal convention at Palais des Congres on Wednesday afternoon. Parti Liberal leader Justin Trudeau will try to further unite the party behind him. The convention runs from Thursday February 20 through Sunday, Feb 23, 2014 in Montreal. (Marie-France Coallier / THE GAZETTE)

Just how they intend to do this will be unveiled, not in granular detail but in broad strokes, in Trudeau’s Saturday keynote. The major themes have been percolating for months and were flagged earlier this week in a video that Trudeau narrates; education, skills training, trade, and infrastructure spending aimed at stimulating growth. Simmering away in the middle distance is the obscure-seeming prospect (which may not figure in the speech) of rewriting the tax code. This last is a tacit admission that tax hikes on the wealthy – the only historically tried and true method of alleviating income inequality – are a political non-starter for a party facing Conservatives who’ve branded themselves as inveterate tax cutters.

The question, assuming there is no stunning unveil of a heretofore unknown economic magic bullet, will be simply this: How will Trudeau’s plan differ from the Conservative plan? The answer, again flagged in the new video, is nuanced; more generous spending on job creation, education and training, a gentler hand when working with the provinces, a lighter touch with foreign trading partners, and the like. These are differences of style and tone and degree, in other words, and not of kind.

So this appears to be the grand bargain on offer, in an effort to bring moderate conservatives back to the Liberal camp; not a sharp deviation from Conservative economic policies (New Democrats would say no deviation at all), but a promise to improve on them and more broadly share the wealth. The clearest divergence between Red and Blue in 2015 will therefore concern democratic reform, and the tenor of leadership itself.

In effect Trudeau and his team are moving, with this renewed focus on the economy, to take the subject off the table. Their objective is to shake conservative pockets of Ontario and B.C. loose from the Tory coalition. There are two risks in this; first, that the economics may push some left-Liberals into the NDP camp; second, that any convergence in policy automatically puts greater emphasis on the contrast in leadership. That works for the Grits when Trudeau is on his game. It fails when he blurts his way into the weeds. “It’s not about me,” he has often said. Not so. This weekend’s economic thrust, de facto, will put his party in contention to form government. That makes it all about him; now, more than ever.

I am a national political columnist for Postmedia News. My work appears in the National Post, on Canada.com, the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Halifax Chronicle-Herald... read more and Vancouver Sun, among other publications. I write primarily about national politics and policy.View author's profile